There’s no real surprise that Steve Jones and Iggy Pop covered Jimi Hendrix
The late Jimi Hendrix is often primarily remembered as a classic rock guitarist, but this only tells a small part of his story. If anything, this angle diminishes just how profound his work was, and how influential it continues to be, despite his premature death being 52 years ago. Indicative of his importance is that everyone from Prince to Jerry Cantrell have noted his influence over the years.
By blending the roles of the lead and rhythm guitarist into one, courtesy of some nifty techniques, the Stratocaster-toting virtuoso effectively established a new form of guitar playing. He wasn’t done there, though. He also helped the formation of a new genre, which, thanks to the continued efforts of peers such as Neil Young, eventually became known as alternative rock. Remarkably, it’s not just alternative rock that Hendrix laid the foundations for; it was metal, psychedelia, and shoegaze, too.
Simply put, Hendrix is best described as the first modern guitarist. Drawing on the efforts of the most esteemed bluesmen such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, although he had a penchant for a pentatonic scale and chromaticism, he also drew on new technological advances such as the distortion and wah pedals to create a sound that was unlike anything anybody had ever heard.
There was no surprise then, that when he played his first London show, the most eminent musicians of the day, including Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend, knew they had to raise the quality of their efforts or be consigned to the dustbin of history. He impacted the latter so intensely that he would later describe Hendrix as a “shaman” in the live setting.
Although it might not be readily apparent, one genre that Hendrix also had a defining influence on was punk. Whether it was directly or proxy, through his impact on guitarists such as Sylvain Sylvain, the edge that Hendrix brought to music was so astonishing that it even punks, who were supposed to hate classic rock, could not resist.
One consequential musician he had a defining impact on was Steve Jones, of punk pioneers Sex Pistols, a band who famously kicked out Glen Matlock for loving the music of Hendrix’s generation.
When speaking to Louder Sound earlier this year, the ‘Pretty Vacant’ guitarist was asked whether hearing ‘Purple Haze’ coming from his neighbour’s window was like “a portal into another world”.
He responded: “I loved music from a very early age. Liked it more than most kids. To them it was just a noise, but I gravitated to it. I don’t know why it was so important to me. Some people are just more musical than others. Some people can go through life without even listening to music. Some people are happy to listen to whatever’s on the radio. I always like to search for more.”
Duly, there can be no surprise that once upon a time, Jones decided to finally cover the iconic 1967 track that set him on his path to greatness. This occurred in 1985 alongside one of the other most prominent progenitors of punk, former Stooges frontman Iggy Pop.
An ominous, languid rework, Jones’s spiky, chorus-drenched guitar provides an intriguing foil to Hendrix’s more unrestrained work on the original, as it bounces off the droning bassline in a way that you’d expect to find in a post-punk staple such as The Cure’s ‘A Forest’ or Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Spellbound’. It’s one of the better Hendrix covers out there.
